Springfield daily republic. [volume] (Springfield, O. [Ohio]) 1887-1888, 1887-02-12

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Joseph Howells, and with him came his Eng
iSh wife and infant son. The baby was
named William Cooper Howells and he in
turn became the sire of a baby of his own.
f. The second youngster. William Dean Howells,
is the heaven of this rapid sketch.
| The English mother of William Cooper
! Howells was a woman of superior education
and refined qualities. She was. moreover, an
ambitious woman, for she taught her son TO
read before he was Years old. The bent of
her mind was toward poetry and general lit
erature, and she left her impress upon her
son, who became an editor, and upon her
grandson, who Is now one of our foremost
men IN letters. Reared Quaker, she was
repudiated 10y the Friends when Cupid gave
her heart and hand to the sturdy young
Welshman. However, she never deserted her
early faith, and the garb of the society was
! too dear a badge for her ever to surrender.
/ Joseph was rover, moving hither AMI
/ thlther, up the Hudson from Manhattan Il
and, over into Virginia, then into southern
( Ohio, and finally across the river to the
tlOurishing settlement Of Wheeling. The
baby from athwart the main became youth
AMI then printer, and at 81 he married
Mary Dean, IN Ohio girl, who was bred and
born III the old fashioned town of New Lisbon.
The printer turned editor, and coming back
into thls~~tate, he drifted here and there,
while an evil star doggcd his heels His mis-
sion i'll those days was to preach the doctrines
Of anti slavery and to herald abroad the
tenets of the Wing faith.
In the meantime his family multiplied The
first born was j. \ Howels and after him
carne the novelist. The two boys We're taught
to set type befOr, they had entered their
teens, and the younger stood on a chair be-
cause he WAS too short tn reach up To his case
The father eventually brought up at Dayton.
where he exchanged all the money he pos
seSSed for The Transcript newspaper W. d.
HowellS was then l. years old, but he was
sklilful printer and hc could set type as fast
n man. " hi!e other lads of his age were
at school he was "A bread winner in his fathers
Office. The Transcript, however was a fail
ur" financially, at least, and the family re
sumel their wamderiugs This time COlum-
bus, the state capital. was their destination.
There the father reported the proceedings Of
the general assembly for Tho Journal, while
the boys found employment as printers with
tho same paper at the princely pay of 81
week. In 1852 editor Howells bought an in
terest in The Ashtahul- Sentinel, and few
months later he removed il to Jefferson, the
county seat, where 1t has ever since remained.
Jefferson is fifty miles north and east of
Cleveland, as the crow flies, ari William
Dean, the flower OF the tribe Of IIowells was
II when he went there to i've His education
indeed was a practical one. The whir of
the hand press and the click of the types had
b'en his teacher and his playmate His COM
panions were men who visited his fathers
sanCtum to renew their subscriptions or to
discuss the very latest political complication.
Those great anti slavery leaders, Senator Ben
jamin F. Wade and Congressman q Joshua r.
Giddings, were citizens of the town, and con-
tributions from their blunt pens oftentimes
found their way into the columns of The Sen
tinel. The Sentinel was ably conducted and
II was filed each week with choice poems BY
Whittier, LOngfellOw and Buchanan Reed
W. {. HowellS, the moving spirit i'll the ell
terpriSe, went to school but six months all
told, hat by application he was able to teach
his sons Latin and French and TO direct their
tastes in the best literary channels His Ii
brary was quite complete. and in it young
Howells spent many satisfying hour He
took up the study OF Spanish, and before
long he translated a story from that language
at his printers case, setting the types as he
went along. Will Marcy" was his maiden
nom de plume, and over that signature he
wrote sly verses and short sketches for The
Jefferson Weekly
OF course the wise heads of the village dis
cussed the merits Of these productions while
toasting their shins before the glowing stoves
of grocery store and postoffice. And alas!
the criticisms were not always delivered in
the spirit Of charity or encouragement So
fierce were the assaults at times that the
young writer was almost inclined to abandon
his pen and stick to his types A little story
called The "reminiscences of a Candidate"
called out a terrible TRADE from these self
appointed censors. who, firing of talking
crops, turned their verbal batteries toward a
slip of a boy whose only fault was a determi-
nation to get on in the world.
At 20 HOwells went TO Columbus with his
father, who had been appointed clerk in the
state senate For time he was legislative
correspondent for a Cincinnati newspaper,
and then he became the news and literary
editor of The Columbus Journal at a salary
of $l2 week. Whitelaw Reid was then
sending dispatches 10 the old Cincinnati Ga
zette for SO week. John J. Piatt, a
writer of some consequence in the west, was
also u citizen of the capital, and he and
Howells pooled their pcetical fancies and
jointly issued a little book of poems 1t was
while in Columbus that HowellS sent his first
verses to The Atlantic. They were accepted,
and check for SIS was sent him Three
years later Lincoln was nominated for the
presidency, and Howells wrote a sketch of
his life and had 1t published in book form. 1t
paid the author 500 in hard cash and gave
him the CUnsulship at Venice. Thus ended
Howeils' career i'll Ohio. He went TO Italy.
and before he was 2S Venetian Life" had
been published in New York and London.
flowells genius came 10 him, perhaps, from
his Quaker grandmother. His mother, Mary
Dean, was a woman of many virtues but it
cannot he said that her inclination was very
marked i'll the direction of letters The father.
now 50 years old, was, until quite recently,
United States consul ut Quebec. He lives in
jefferson, where his son, J. A Howells, still
owns and edits The Sestinel Anne HowellS,
the younger daughter, married Frechette,
the Canadian poet. She, too, is writer of
verses and descriptive articles but her talent
is not of as high an order as that Of her dis
brother The novelist is Howells
rather than a Dean His fathers stoop is
in him, while he inherits his
mothers Pennsylvania German thrift and
business capacity. \ shining mark he is,
surely, and yet he is not a college graduate.
J. b. NJ
The Effects of Malaria.
1t does not matter at all whether the ma
laria SDrinyS from, a rocky sib-SrratrI,n which +